Le Bout du Monde, ‘L’ecume des jours’, Roussillon, 2011

For me, the best thing since sliced bread was pulling my first hand-kneaded loaf out of the oven. Why is it that in this ‘progressive’ world of facebook and nespresso pods we derive so much pleasure from catching up with a friend face to face or grinding our own beans?

Because you get out what you put in.

Edouard Laffitte grew tired of the easy route – commodity wines grown on the flats, managed by chemical reps, harvested by machine and made in factory cooperatives. He decided to slow down and start doing things properly, and went to ‘the end of the world’ to do it.

On a parcel of old vines in Lansac, with slopes so steep there was no choice but to plough by horse and harvest by hand, Edouard started making wines to be drunk. He shunned chemicals, fining and filtering, allowing the quality of the grapes and the skills of the winemaker to talk to the drinker uncensored.

This wine is 50% Carignan and 50% the very obscure local variety of Lladoner Pelut – a grape I’d never tried before and quite similar to Grenache. It pays to follow the winemaker’s example and take things slow when you drink it – it is a little reductive at first, though a single decanting sorts this out if you don’t have an hour or so to let it blow off naturally in the bottle. Time brings out the warmth and dark fruits while the fundamental freshness and clarity is retained.

This is a beautiful drink. Just the thing if you want to stop, smell the roses and savour the fruits of someone else’s labour.

:::ON:::

O = Organic: farming without the use of inputs that can have adverse effects. ‘Non-systemic’ fungicides and pesticides are used in place of ‘systemic’ chemicals said to enter the ‘blood’ of a plant (akin to antibiotics in the human world).

N = Natural: no additives or aids (eg yeast, yeast food, added acid/enzymes/tannin) bar a touch of sulphur during aging or before bottling, if any at all.